The highlight of today’s position papers, however, are the more immediate 2013 recommendations to policy makers.

For instance, AGree proposes that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) should be protected from “detrimental funding cuts and harmful structural changes that would undermine the program’s ability to serve the food insecure.”

With respect to immigration reform, AGree calls for “reform that provides a path to earned citizenship for undocumented immigrants currently in the U.S., particularly those working in the food and agriculture sectors.” They also support “a simple, efficient, and fair guest worker program that allows producers to hire seasonal foreign workers.”

Quite a number of the new AGree recommendations track very closely with NSAC positions on the next farm bill. For instance, AGree endorses:

It is funded by the Ford Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and The Walton Family Foundation.